


Somewhere Ages And Ages Hence

by Syntax



Category: DragonFable (Video Games)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Book 3, Calamity Saga (regretfully) Canon, Canon Compliant Except Where Canon Is Stupid, Canon Rewrite, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Experimental Style, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Headcanon, Kinda, Other, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, book 3 is a mess and so is seppy's lore, so we're gonna just ignore it and make something fun together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2020-12-17 07:07:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21050327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: According to Swordhaven's record systems, shortly after you fled into the forest, you were beset upon by wolves, and your remains were found hours later by a Rose researcher who had been on his way into the city for work that morning when he stumbled across the grisly scene of your demise.You are, for all intents and purposes, free of everything that was plaguing you now that you're dead and gone.You can't help but wonder if your new life hiding in the woods pretending to be dead and playing nanny to a Rose cultist's child could be counted as freedom.





	1. The Woods Are Lovely, Dark And Deep

**Author's Note:**

> yes i'm aware i'm starting a project in the middle of another project again, no i do not know when this will be finished, and yes i have once again turned what was intended to be a small project into a huge sprawling monster
> 
> at least this one is easy to write

You first encountered him by sheer luck. Whether it was good luck or bad luck, or even your luck or his luck, was impossible to determine.

But clearly luck was involved, because otherwise your paths would never have crossed at all.

Your apprenticeship in the capital—the one that you had never wanted in the first place, but your family had insisted—had gone downhill quickly. Your master was convinced there was a thief lying in wait amongst the workers and you were the obvious suspect since you were new and clearly didn't want to be there. She couldn't accuse you of these crimes outright; there were laws against that sort of thing and there was no real evidence of your supposed crimes. But she did punish you for what she suspected you were up to.

Your pay was docked with the claim that you were a lousy worker who made many mistakes. Your pay actually went missing with some frequency, and your master would always have to be reminded that while the pay could be reduced, you were legally required to be paid _something_ for your work. Your duties diminished but your hours increased as your master had you switch from the job you'd actually been sent to her to learn to whatever humiliating task she could think of.

Every now and then she would hint to you that all of this would stop if you would just admit to your thieving ways and return what had been stolen. But you had nothing to admit to and no idea where the supposedly missing items were, and so things remained as they were.

It was kind of funny, in a way. Your master was committing real crimes in order to punish you for your fictional ones. For a long while you suspected that there was no thief at all and she just wanted someone to take her frustrations out on in the middle of the workday.

Then something expensive went missing and you woke up to the sound of knights pounding on your bedroom door while your master screamed her head off.

You forced open the windows and ran.

What could you do except run? You'd never been able to prove your innocence before, and it wasn't like you had any means of providing bail. If you got arrested then your life would pretty much be over. So you ran as far as you could, not really caring where you were going.

You made it to the city square. You made it to the gate. You made it to the edge of the surrounding woods.

You don't really know where your feet took you in the end. The last thing you remember seeing before a heavy blow struck the back of your head was the distant outline of a log cabin.

You awoke in irregular spurts, different parts of your awareness coming in at different times. At first you were only lying down. A dull tingling in the back of your head came next, along with a stiffness in your shoulders. Light registered against the dark of your own eyelids. You tried in vain to shut them tighter and drown that light out. It was not doing any favors for your head. You noticed a pressure on your body, almost like a heavy blanket, but at the same time with no warmth or true weight.

You noticed voices floating about around you, and in that moment the rest of your awareness came screaming to the forefront.

There is a small little girl staring at you intently. Bright red hair, brighter blue eyes. She's perhaps one or two feet from your face. You startle, but your body does not move with you.

Actually.

You can't move your body at all.

You can't even scream when the realization hits you.

The little girl keeps staring at you. She says something, but you're too stuck inside your own head to process what she's saying as anything other than a vague jumble of sounds. You keep frantically testing your control over your own body. You can move your eyes, and blink, and breathe, just barely, but none of your fingers and toes are moving, much less your limbs. There's a panic rising in you as the seconds drag on. You can feel moisture pooling rapidly at the corners of your eyes.

Is this the end for you?

You hear a distant rumble, and then you're being lifted up to your feet by a sudden hand pulling on your shirt, coming face to face with a _very_ angry looking man.

Or. You would be lifted onto your feet, but this man is significantly taller than you. Your feet dangle limply a good several inches above the ground.

There are three things you notice about him with in the span of about a second that make you seriously reconsider running from the knights that were coming to arrest you: one, his eyes are not only red, but _glowing_ red; two, you're not the heaviest person alive, but you're also not the lightest, and he is able to support the weight of your entire body with one hand seemingly effortlessly; three, _he is wearing a Rose uniform._

It is only by the sheer virtue of your paralysis that you do not immediately start screaming.

The Rose cultist asks you— no, he _demands_ from you— why you came to his house. Why you were running. What you were running from. Why you decided to lead that trouble to his daughter. Why he shouldn't just kill you right now.

You try to tell him. You try to plead with him. You try to say anything at all to him that will make him let you go and leave you alive so you can run away and never look back. But you can't. You're still paralyzed. And he's only getting angrier.

The little girl pipes up again, pointing out that whatever spell that's keeping you from moving might also be keeping you from talking. You are so grateful to her in that moment that you could practically kiss her adorable little cheeks.

The Rose cultist glares at you as the pressure surrounding your body lessens slightly. You gasp immediately, precious oxygen flowing unbidden through your lungs. Perhaps as a gesture of mercy, as if mercy were something that Rose cultists were capable of, he allows you to breathe deeply all you like until your breaths settle down again and you remember that he has still not let you go.

Then he asks you again: why did you come to this house?

You tell him everything. Everything. Far more than you meant to and far _far_ more than you should have. From the thief, to your master's lawbreaking, to the apprenticeship in general, to why your parents ever sent you to the city in the first place. You voice was already scratchy and hoarse from how long you had spent running to even get to this place—midway through your rambling confession the Rose cultist sends his daughter back into the log cabin to get you a drink of water because he can't understand what you're saying anymore.

As the morning (and your rambling) drags on, he eventually leads you into the log cabin and sets you down at what you can only assume is his own dinner table, a pad and pen in his hands as he documents what you've been telling him. His daughter has disappeared down a hallway that you can't fully see, perhaps to wait out whatever grown up business her father is conducting with you now that the excitement of your discovery has worn off. He looks displeased, but his eyes aren't glowing anymore, and you take that as a good sign. He keeps asking you questions and you keep answering them.

Eventually, he stops. He holds a hand up to silence you and your mouth snaps shut immediately, either due to whatever paralytic magic he was using on you earlier coming back full force, or due to the sheer intimidating presence he has. He looks over his notes on the things you've been telling him. He steeples his fingers and leans back in his chair.

Then he asks how much you desire to live.

You tell him you'll do anything to live. Anything he asks of you as long as you don't have to go to prison for a crime you never committed.

This seems to please him, or at least, you think it does. He smiles, at least.

It is not a good smile.

You only hear about what happened next in vague, second-hand terms from the Rose cultist he comes from from work that day.

According to Swordhaven's record systems, shortly after you fled into the forest, you were beset upon by wolves, and your remains were found hours later by a Rose researcher who had been on his way into the city for work that morning when he stumbled across the grisly scene of your demise. Your body, or what was left of it after the wolves were done feasting, was then taken into the city to be identified.

Your binding to your master was rendered forfeit. The following day, a discrete investigation was launched regarding her business, and numerous labor law violations were discovered. In addition, the items which you were suspected of stealing were later found in the home of one of your master's eldest business partners, who reportedly felt that they should be earning more for their work than your master was willing to pay. Your master's business was forced to close. The money your parents had sent to pay for your apprenticeship was returned to them, along with your remains so that they might be properly buried.

You are, for all intents and purposes, free of everything that was plaguing you now that you're dead and gone.

You can't help but wonder if your new life hiding in the woods pretending to be dead and playing nanny to a Rose cultist's child could be counted as freedom.

You don't get asked to do things very often. Or rather, you don't get _told_ to do things very often. The only things you've really been _told_ to do thus far are to stay out of sight of anyone that might come by the cabin, and to not go into the Rose cultist's room under any circumstances. That's it.

Considering how long you spent being your master's slave in all but name, this leaves you understandably perplexed.

The child, whose name you learn is Gravelynn, asks you to play with her all the time, but for as much as your life is forfeit to the whims of her and her father, when she asks you to play, she is genuinely asking you. It's almost bizarre. She does not threaten you or pester you or throw a tantrum until you agree. She asks you once, asks you a second time just to be sure you really are too busy doing something around the house or not feeling well or otherwise in a condition where you have a valid reason not to play with her, and if you still don't agree to play then she just goes on her merry way and plays by herself. Or she finds a place to sit and watches whatever it is you're doing at the moment.

You've been unnerved into stopping your current task and playing with her for a while more than once.

As for tasks, you technically don't have any. The Rose cultist had made it quite clear that your only real purpose in his home was to provide company for his daughter while he was away at work. What you did aside from that was entirely up to you. That didn't exactly sit right with you. There was a young girl in the house with no schooling except for spare library books to read from, laundry to be done, surfaces to clean, and meals to cook— and considering the Rose cultist had gone as far to welcome you into his home and procure what you hoped was just a very convincing fake body to falsify your death certificate with, you absolutely refused to let him do all the work while you just goofed around.

So you kept yourself busy by taking care of the house while he was away at work in the city. Sweeping the floors, washing the dishes, making snacks for Gravelynn in between games of tag and twenty questions. Somewhere along the way you got Gravelynn to join you in your cleaning after she realized that the sooner you were done with your work the more time there would be to play. You even learn to make a game of taking care of the house, which takes longer to get everything done but leaves Gravelynn in fits of giggles as the two of you hurl clouds of soap bubbles at each other.

You miss whatever expression the Rose cultist must've had the first time he returns to the log cabin after a long day at work to find his house clean and tidy, and preparations for dinner already underway. He hadn't said anything to you then. He hasn't said anything to you now. You think perhaps that he might look at you strangely from time to time, but considering who he is and how you came into his life the strange looks could honestly be for any number of reasons.

Still.

When he comes home and shoos you out of the kitchen to resume the work you'd started on dinner in his own way without even saying hello first, or eyes the broom that you still haven't put away from when you were sweeping up the dirt his daughter had tracked in, or bringing in blankets from the clothes line behind the cabin—you have to wonder if he even cares what you do for his family.

You suppose it could be worse.

You could be dead.

You are, like most of the people who lived in your village, and like you assume most of the people you had met outside of your village, not magical in the slightest. Humans were not an inherently magical race. While a human with magic wasn't uncommon, it also wasn't strictly a given that any human was capable of magic in the same way that any elf or fairy would be.

This did not bother the Rose cultist. Though he was not adverse to using magic himself, as had been rather bluntly demonstrated during your first meeting with the man, being a Rose he was hardly appreciative of it. At least, you assumed so. He specifically avoided using magic whenever possible, and that was kind of the mission statement of the Rose cult, to rid the world of the taint of magic through any means necessary. It would be strange if he had decided to join them despite not practicing what they preached.

So needless to say the day that you are proven very wrong about the Rose cultist's opinions regarding magic was a surprising one to say the least.

He comes home early one day while you are near completely hidden away in the kitchen washing dishes from the day's afternoon meal. You hear him come in—you have no reason not to, after all, since the log cabin isn't very big and Gravelynn had no reason to go out the front door in the middle of her piano practice—and you turn to greet him as he comes in.

And because you are near completely hidden away in the kitchen, and he was not expecting to see you so soon in the day, and you were already looking at him, you are greeted to the sight of his skin melting off and his head growing horns as what you later find out to be _dozens_ of layers of illusions fall away from him one by one.

When he finally looks in your direction—hunched over, tired, wincing, skinless, monstrous, red eyes glowing again like hateful coals set in a carcass waiting to be carved and served—you could almost swear he looks just as surprised to see you now as you are to see him.

He does not say anything.

He does not need to.

And even if he did, you wouldn't have been able to hear him anyways.

You can dimly feel your blood draining from your face as you look at him, and as your sudden, inexplicable lightheadedness sends you and the plate you were cleaning crashing to the floor, you find yourself wondering if it is the cultist or the monster lurking underneath his skin that is the more horrifying creature.

You wonder, and you could almost swear you hear him crying out in alarm as blackness overtakes you.

You wake up on the couch.

The sunlight streaming in through the windows is red-tinged and dim, which gives you a good idea of what time it must be but not how long you actually slept. Something moving in the corner of your eye catches your attention. There's a lamp that's been set aside on the floor for you, the candle perhaps halfway burned since it'd been lit.

You were out for quite a while then, if someone was preparing for it to be darker when you awoke. You take the lantern in your hands and snuff out the candle, dimming the lights in the cabin's main room even further. If you were already awake, there was no need to waste any more wax.

There's a taste of what you vaguely think might be a potion, but you're not entirely sure. You don't ache as much as you think you should after falling to the floor.

Ah. That's right. You did that.

You shift upright on the couch, wincing at what the sudden change in bodily alignment does to the back of your head, and mull over what happened. The image of him standing in the doorway comes to you unbidden, at once exceptionally detailed and hopelessly blurry as your mind tries to reconcile the points where fear had made you focus and where fear had made you blind.

He was red, mostly, red like his daughter's hair, red like the scarf he wore over his uniform, red like meat freshly cut from the cow. Huh. Speaking of cows, you hadn't seen any marbling or fat on him like you think you would have if he'd been truly skinless. There had just been. Red. Red and spikes and horns and bone, and the more you think about it the less you're convinced that it's something that could just happen naturally.

Before you can finish your pondering however, you hear a door at the end of the hallway open, and that's your only warning before the sudden sound of bare feet on wooden floors fills the cabin and Gravelynn launches herself at you in need of a hug. Your arms wrap around her faster than you can figure out how she even knew you were awake again. Then it hits you that she must've heard you moving around on the couch. Sound travels quickly in the small cabin.

You hear her breathing in a might higher note than you would have liked, and suddenly all of your brainpower is being spent keeping the little girl in your arms from crying.

I'm sorry, she says. I should've told you, she says. My daddy has a _con-dih-shun_, she says. Please don't be mad at me, she says.

It's okay, you say as you ruffle her hair.

I'm not mad at you, you say as you wipe away her tears.

And you're not.

It's not like you weren't already stuck here, after all. It's not like you got hurt, after all.

(It's not like Gravelynn has the strength needed to carry you over to the couch, after all.)

You tell her you're fine, and you'll talk to her father about things the next time you see him. What's one more secret to keep between a rose cultist, his daughter, and their legally dead nanny, huh?

Despite your best efforts, you will not see him again until an entire week has passed.

Evidently you weren't the only one spooked.

When you see him again a week later, coming home from work just as tired and hunched over as he'd been a week before when you saw him for what he really was, he makes sure to look into the kitchen for you before he does anything else. You give him what you hope is a friendly wave, and tell him that you and Gravelynn made cookies earlier, and would he like to try one?

The Rose cultist looks over in the opposite direction. His daughter is sitting on the couch, one hand holding a cookie and the other holding a small princess doll, staring at him in excited anticipation.

He looks back at you. You give him a smile along with your wave.

He lets out a sigh and heads into the kitchen, the trap you'd set for him too powerful for him to do anything else. He takes a cookie from your outstretched hand and you use the opportunity to examine his face for any sign of what you know it could turn into.

Looking at him now, he doesn't actually resemble his daughter all that much. The shape of his jawline is different, the bridge of his nose, the arch of his brows. Perhaps the lack of resemblance could be chalked up to Gravelynn taking after her mother, but surely she would still have _some_ of his features. The only thing the two of them share is coloration, and even then the Rose cultist's hair is a much duller shade of red than his daughter's, and his eyes (now that you're looking at them when they aren't glowing) are pink instead of blue. You suppose it's possible that this could be yet another illusion, but why would you want to look like someone who could conceivably not be the father of your own child?

The thought hits you that maybe Gravelynn is adopted and suddenly you feel like a colossal idiot.

There's a thoughtful expression on the Rose cultist's face as he takes a bite and you try to run over the various questions in your mind that beg to be answered. What, exactly, had you seen that day? What was he, really? A man? A monster?

(Every Rose is a monster, some part of you whispers.)

Why was he even _in_ the Rose cult anyways? You have so many questions just sitting on the tip of your tongue that you don't know which one to start with, although you're certain that you'd only be lucky to get one of them answered before he decides that your trap has held him for far too long.

Almonds, he says unprompted.

All of your questions fizzle up and die in your head.

This does not help you feel less like an idiot.

Almonds, you repeat.

These have almonds in them, he says, both questioningly and not. He stares at the partially eaten cookie as if examining it with a researcher's eye might yield some hitherto unknown secrets and takes another bite.

Uh.

Yes, you say, not really understanding why he would pick up on that specific flavor when you and Gravelynn both had added a whole assortment of nuts to the cookie dough before popping it in. She'd gotten a big bag of them for a nice price at the market with her allowance and was ecstatic to add them to her usual repertoire of snacks.

I see, he says. He takes another bite of the cookie.

I'm allergic to almonds, he says, and you hope that you're only imagining how his voice sounds somewhat hoarse now.

Uhhhhhh, you say, incredibly eloquently, then maybe you should stop eating that and get some medicine?

He shrugs. Probably not, he says, and you're realizing now that the increasing hoarseness of his voice is probably the sound of his throat swelling up, since it's not like they can make me even _more_ dead.

You feel your mind come to a screeching halt.

Completely unaffected by your reality collapsing in on itself, the Rose cultist extracts two more cookies from the plate on the counter and heads out of the kitchen without another word. You can hear him compliment Gravelynn on her cookie choices before the soft sound of his bedroom door opening and closing reaches you.

Gravelynn rushes into the kitchen maybe half a step later and grabs onto your arm as she babbles excitedly about how much of a success the cookies were and how happy she is that you showed her how to make them and actually could the two of you do this again some time?

You end up nodding, boneless, Gravelynn's words completely failing to register in your mind as you try to grasp what her father had said.

You hadn't even asked him one of your questions, in the end.

And now you have so much more.

Though there is some part of you that is ashamed to admit it, (some very, very small part of you, that you very desperately try not to think of how not-actually-small-at-all it really is) you are increasingly wary of the Rose cultist after what you've started thinking of as The Almond Incident. It has you filled with a jittery, anxious energy, and rather than toss and turn at night or skulk in fear during the day you funnel that energy into cleaning.

Lucky for you, Gravelynn's excursions through the woods give you a lot to clean up after, as well as a lot of time to think.

You may not be magical after all, but you know what magic can do. And you know the kind of magics that exist out there that made the people behind the Rose cult decide that it was too dangerous for any magic at all to continue to exist in their world.

You've heard stories of necromancy before. Souls taken from the dearly departed and thrust into patchwork creations, monstrosities, servants made to do their creator's bidding while the soul trapped inside could do nothing but watch. You've heard of skeletal armies advancing upon the living, a village in Doomwood becoming enveloped in a green fog where only zombies roam, and twisted, horrible creatures beyond mortal understanding that lurk in the night.

He had told you, as casually as any man would say what the weather looked like that day, that he was dead.

And the dead do not walk the earth in Rose uniforms caring for their maybe-adoptive children outside of the capital city.

You wonder if perhaps you were giving him permission to do more than just fake your death when he asked you how much you wanted to live. You wonder what sort of magics made him the way he is, and what he was required to sacrifice for them. You wonder why he keeps his daughter with him despite the obvious risk.

Your hands grip the broom tighter as a sudden though occurs to you.

You don't know how this story will end. You don't know what it might eventually lead up to. But if the Rose cultist proves to be a danger to you, or to Gravelynn—

Screw being legally dead. You're taking the girl and running back to the knights, prison or no prison.

Despite your reservations about her father, Gravelynn continues to be a delight. Most of the time at least. She grows on you like a vine on a tree, with none of the clinginess or parasitism that such a comparison would usually imply. You can't exactly join her on her trips into the capital for obvious reasons, but you can try to keep her out of trouble when she decides to go on adventures in the woods surrounding her and her father's cabin.

You're deeply thankful that no one seems to go into these woods for some reason, despite their relative proximity to the city walls. It wouldn't do to have your death certificate revoked because someone saw you and Gravelynn playing in the woods. You're fairly certain the Rose cultist would be less than pleased if that were to happen, though you're less certain if it would be because of his deception being revealed or because his daughter's nanny would be taken away.

Despite your better efforts, she still manages to get into a lot of trouble while adventuring in the woods. Gravelynn is a remarkably clever troublemaker of a girl, and while you love her dearly, in some of your less pleased moments as you haul yourself out of the fifth mud puddle or ravine or rotted tree trunk that day you can't help but wonder if maybe she's doing this on purpose. You were a child too once, and you remembered how much it rankled you to have a babysitter squashing all of your highly dangerous fun. It's easy to imagine Gravelynn is little different.

As the days go on you acquire a deep understanding of why the Rose cultist was willing to go as far as faking your death in order to get someone to keep an eye on his daughter while he was away at work.

One such adventure, involving you running through the woods for fifteen minutes trying to find an errant child who didn't understand that games of hide and seek generally only last a few minutes and she absolutely should not keep hiding if the round has ended and you still cannot find her, leads to Gravelynn spraining her ankle as she tries (and fails) to do a trick landing she'd seen some street performer in the market do instead of just climbing down the tree she was hiding in like a reasonable human being. She doesn't fall very far, mind you, which is probably why her ankle is only sprained instead of completely shattered, but that's less because the tree wasn't very tall and more because you threw yourself into her landing trajectory in a desperate attempt to make sure the child you traded your life for didn't die.

You're very certain you chipped a few teeth when she landed on you. You hope that's the worst of the damage you have to deal with.

Your first sign that something is wrong is not how loudly she wails, but seeing the angle at which her tiny little foot connects to her tiny little leg. She's in pain, yes, you know clearly well from her yelping and sniffling that her landing had hurt her and she doesn't feel very good, but you've interacted with enough children in your old village to know that the younger a child is, the more they rely on the reactions of others to gauge how badly they're actually hurt. You stuff your panic down deep inside of yourself where you can deal with it later and keep your face stone still as you examine her. It's a sprain, yes, but it doesn't look to be a particularly nasty one. You tell her that she's going to be perfectly alright.

Gravelynn's height is suitably lesser than yours that it would make trying to help her hobble along back to the cabin deeply impractical, so instead you opt to scoop her into your arms and carry her all the way home. She's sniffling still, because while she doesn't know how bad the damage actually is she knows how bad it hurts, and you try your best to keep her calm and optimistic until the two of you get home. You have no idea what sort of medical supplies are kept in the log cabin (since you've never needed to use them until now), but you know that there are pillows, and you know that there is ice, and if there aren't any bandages then you have some spare clothes lying around to use instead after the Rose cultist got tired of seeing you move around his house in only the pajamas you had on when the knights came to arrest you.

You make up a story to tell Gravelynn about a princess who fell out of a tower and crashed into the underworld on your way cabin. You've just gotten to describing the great and terrible underworld dragon that the princess slays on her way back to the surface when you arrive, and it takes a bit of finagling to get the door open while both of your hands are occupied. A bit, but you manage. Your own princess is gingerly placed on the couch and told to keep her leg lifted up for as long as she can hold it while you fetch some pillows from her room. She takes it all in with a nod. You go to get the pillows.

A few minutes later you're gathering ice from the refrigerator and wrapping it in a towel for a makeshift compact while Gravelynn adjusts the pillows under her foot to try and achieve a perfect angle-to-comfort ratio. She's a bit pale, a bit restless, and you bring her the compact with a few mixed nut cookies on top, happy to see the smile that spreads across her face as she accepts your gifts.

You tell her that you're going to go work on your chores for the rest of the day since you don't exactly think that she's in the mood to keep playing (she's not) but you're going to leave all the doors open while you clean so that you can easily hear her if she needs anything. She gives you a nod. You give her a pat on the head. And then you go get the broom and start sweeping.

You haven't been living in the cabin for very long, maybe a month at the most generous estimation since you haven't exactly been keeping track of the days, but it's only when Gravelynn is silent on the other side of the house and you're sweeping up the bathroom with hardly any noise at all to accompany you that you realize how accustomed you've grown to the sound of her voice. You make it through about fifteen minutes of silence before you stick your head out a door and ask her if she'd like to play a word game with you.

You're still playing by the time her father gets home for the night.

It's almost enough to make you forget that he's almost certainly not going to like that you allowed his daughter to come to harm.

When you hear a door open, you're momentarily confused. You already opened all the doors hours ago and you doubt that Gravelynn would suddenly decide to go back into the woods on a twisted ankle. You peek your head into the main room to ask Gravelynn if she decided to go out anyways just to be sure.

Instead you see the Rose cultist standing by the front door, hand still on the latch, staring at his daughter and her injured leg with an emotion that you are afraid to try pinning down.

Gravelynn greets him happily, like there's absolutely nothing wrong with this situation. He says a terse hello back at her as the front door finally closes. He keeps staring at her leg. Or perhaps he's staring at the shirt you used to wrap it up. Or perhaps he's just staring off into space while trying to figure out the best way to discretely kill you.

You take a few steps into the main room. His eyes flick over to your direction.

They're glowing again.

You can already feel the pressure building up around your lungs.

I climbed a tree today, Gravelynn chirps, apparently oblivious to your impending demise.

The Rose cultist glances back at her. Did you now, he says.

Gravelynn answers in the affirmative, still oddly chipper. Yup, she says, we were playing hide and seek and I found this really big tree that looked perfect for hiding in, so I did and I won and then I fell on the way down and nanny caught me and brought me home!

The sudden lie breaks you out of your stupor like magic.

You didn't _fall_, you tried to _cartwheel out of a tree_, you sputter.

I can cartwheel and fall at the same time, Gravelynn says.

You _jumped_, you say.

And you caught me, Gravelynn says, so what's the big deal?

Still not far from where he came in, you can faintly hear the Rose cultist sigh. The pressure on your chest evaporates as if it was never there to begin with. His expression, when he looks over at you again, is more tired than anything else.

His eyes are still glowing red, though.

He beckons for you to follow him down the hall and you decide that one out of two is probably a good enough sign that you're not going to die tonight.

The Rose cultist leads to to where the bandages in the house are kept and teaches you how to properly wrap up a sprain, pointing out what you did correctly in your makeshift shirt wrapping and where you went wrong. You have a feeling he's telling you this so that you can better help Gravelynn if something like this happens again. You pay close attention to his explanations and commit as much as you can to memory.

He asks the two of you to give him the full story of what happened while he was at work, making a point to tell Gravelynn first that he's not mad at her for doing something reckless (which for some strange reason you have an easy time believing) but he _is_ mad that she might have lied to him. He wants her to grow up safe and happy, he says, and he can't rest easy knowing she's really safe if she starts fibbing about when she's actually in danger. As much as he wants her to not do dangerous things, he wants more for her to be able to trust him when she gets hurt.

Gravelynn's face scrunches up with the pain of her father being more disappointed than angry, but she nods and mumbles a quiet okay. She meanders her way into the story (with a little prompting from you here and there) and tells her father more or less everything that happened, from seeing the performers in the market, to cartwheeling from the tree, to even deciding to go and play outside for the day in the first place.

You can see the Rose cultist nodding every so often in the story, and he'll ask you to clarify some details that Gravelynn left out or hadn't explained properly—like how you were calling out and looking for her and she wasn't answering, or how you scrambled to break her fall because landing wrong at that distance could've easily killed her. As the talking goes on, the red glow in his eyes starts to fade ever so slowly, leaving more and more of the pink color underneath visible.

You kind of wonder if he notices, but you don't want to bring it up lest he get angry again.

Eventually he seems satisfied enough and gives the two of you a clipped nod. He rises back to his feet rather than crouch down to speak with his daughter at eye-level and—he stalls. Just for a few seconds. You imagine that if you hadn't been watching him for signs of murderous intent, you might not have noticed at all.

Whatever had caused the momentary lapse lasts only for that, a moment, and he asks the two of you if you've eaten dinner yet. Or started dinner yet, in your case.

The night goes on almost like normal after that. You make dinner. You eat dinner. You wash the dishes. You get ready for bed.

You offered to help the Rose cultist escort his daughter to her bedroom for the night, but he turned you down. She's not that heavy, he says, and you believe him entirely considering how easily he had lifted _you_ all those days and nights ago.

The only thing about this particular night that ends differently after all is said and done is that for the first time as all the lights go out and the Rose cultist heads away to his room, he bids you a good night before closing the door.

You sink into the couch cushions one night (because there were only two bedrooms and two beds in the log cabin and you didn't have ownership over either of them) and just find yourself staring at the ceiling in the dark, barely able to make out the different planks of wood lining through the moonlight streaming in through the windows.

It's actually kind of distracting, the light. You had trouble sleeping after the excitement and exhaustion of your first few days being free from your master faded away. You were used to a more complete darkness as you slept, your bunk at the workhouse being in a room with tinted windows and thick curtains.

Huh. You should probably ask the Rose cultist if he'd be willing to get some curtains of his own. Beyond helping you sleep at night, they added an extra layer of privacy to the house, and the Rose cultist clearly valued his privacy considering how far he lived outside of the capital gates. Not to mention...

You still don't know what to think of him. You still don't know whether he's a man wearing a monster's skin or a monster wearing a man's. You don't know if he's both or neither. You don't know where his daughter came from. You don't know why he's so secretive about her. You don't even know why he's Rose.

You don't know what to think of any of this, not really. You were a helping hand on your family's farm, then you were an apprentice—or a scapegoat, perhaps—and now you're, what, a servant? A prisoner? You could've been a prisoner if you'd just stayed in your room that morning instead of running off to the woods, and your family wouldn't think you were dead and buried like they do now.

You wonder what your funeral was like. Did anyone cry for you? Did anyone show up? Did you even have one at all, or have your parents disavowed you because of the crimes you had supposedly committed?

You don't know.

You'll probably never know.

You don't get a lot of sleep that night.


	2. Everything I Had Planned More Or Less

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, but it's over.

So hey, this was supposed to be this big tender fic with a lot of hurt/comfort for seppy but uhhh. I kinda don't feel any joy about these games anymore? Like I've moved on since I wrote this fic. I was _already_ in the process of moving on when I wrote this fic. And I don't see the point in writing for something that doesn't make me happy.

But I know that there are people who read and enjoyed it, and there are people who wanted to see it continued, so here's what I had planned for the remainder of the fic in bulletpoint form.

  * The remaining chapters were going to be named "But I Have Promises To Keep", "And Miles To Go Before I Sleep", and "And Miles To Go Before I Sleep." They were named after the poem _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening_ by Robert Frost, as the poem _The Road Not Taken_ named the story as a whole.
  * There would have been more domestic scenes with the reader interacting with Gravelynn and Sepulchure while Gravey's leg healed. At some point, the reader would've realized that they don't know what Sepulchure's name is, but they also don't know how to ask him.
  * _You realize, suddenly, when the Rose cultist thanks you for your assistance in making dinner that night (gnocchi with sautéed fish and some lightly wilted greens, because no matter how you came to this place or what your status is you are not going to eat like a serf), that among all the many things you don't know about him, there is something that stands most pressingly above the rest._

_You have no idea what his name is._

_You have been living with him and his daughter for probably a month, possibly more than a month, and you have no idea what his name is._

_You have absolutely no idea how the hell you can ask about that._

_Looking back though, it makes sense. The Rose cultist had not given you his name while you spilled your entire life's story at him pretty much, and you've never once heard it actually said in his house. Gravelynn refers to her father as 'Daddy' when speaking to him, and 'My Dad' when not. She speaks about him with the sky and the stars in her eyes and an obvious love on her face, but that doesn't exactly help you figure out what his name is._

_You spend a few moments vaguely wondering if he knew what your name is before remembering oh, right, he'd kind of need to know your name since you're pretty sure he's the one who signed your death certificate._

_This is. Quite the pickle that you've gotten yourself into._

_Then again, to your recollection he's never used your name before. Gravelynn is all too happy to refer to you as 'nanny' (which you're actually not all that fond of as a nickname, but like, it's better than 'slave') but you know for a fact that she knows your name because she uses that too. And she's used your name when talking about you to her father, so there's no way he could have forgotten your name since you'd given it to him._

_You have no idea how to go about rectifying this situation._

  * Sepulchure begins to resume dropping his illusions when he comes home, which he justifies by saying he has every right to do so since this is his house and he can do what he wants there. The reader tries not to faint again, but they'll have a hard time getting used to his true appearance. They start calling him the rose-monster instead of the rose-cultist.
  * _There is the Rose-cultist, sans all his illusions like he'd been who knows how many weeks ago now, pan-frying something on the stove and looking for all the world like he belongs in this space, in this body, doing something this blithely mundane. He turns back at the sound of your mad scramble. You meet his eyes._

_Red again. Glowing again. Not as strongly as when you'd seen him angry before, but still glowing._

_You freeze._

_You feel... Stricken, almost, by the sight of him, by the sight of his eyes, by the sight of his horns, by the sight of all the sinew clearly visible along his arms and shoulders and the bones jutting out from under the skin along his side and—_

_There is a gaping hole in the middle of his torso. You have absolutely no idea how you missed that the last time you saw him like this._

_Are you going somewhere, he says, and the tone he uses (playful, quietly delighted at your expense) breaks you out of your stupor._

_You shake your head furiously. You can feel your face heating up almost as red as his. You shuffle over to take a seat at the dinner table while he goes back to his cooking, and the sheer normalcy of the action is almost enough to make you forget he's not wearing his skin again._

_Almost._

_You rest your head in your hands and just watch him for a while, trying to get used to the sight of him._

_He flips whatever's frying in the pan with a practiced ease. It looks like some kind of fish from where you're sitting, but you're not entirely sure._

_See anything interesting from other there, he asks. You hadn't noticed the first time, but his voice is different in this form. Deeper. Somewhat scratchy. There's a sort of—ethereal, almost echo-y quality to it; you wonder if this is what ghosts sound like._

_(Is he...? No, ghosts weren't solid.)_

_I wasn't really expecting to be seeing you like this again, you admit eventually._

_This is my house, he says simply. There's not really anything you can say to refute that point, so you don't bother._

  * Eventually they will become so used to his true appearance that they forget other people would find it horrifying and question why he can't go into town with Gravelynn for some emergency grocery shopping after he's already undone his illusions for the night, but that's more for chapter 3 or 4.
  * At some point the reader catches him playing piano with Gravelynn in adorable father-daughter bonding, because it is my headcanon that he's the one who taught her how to play.
  * _You realize one day, after the Rose-monster comes home bearing sheet music in the same way that your father once brandished a new toy that he'd bought you at the market that day, just who exactly had taught Gravelynn how to play the massive piano that took up a quarter of her room._

_In retrospect you're not exactly sure why you ever thought it was anyone other than her father._

_His illusions are already off and the sinew and spikes of his upper body are already exposed to the air by the time he takes a seat nest to Gravelynn on the piano bench, Gravelynn bouncing excitedly next to him as she reads through the sheet music, and you yourself standing in the doorway to the little girl's room, torn between wanting to watch them play through the music together and wanting to give the pair some privacy._

_For his part, the Rose-monster seems to ignore you in favor of warming up. He cycles through scales that you're not familiar with, using both hands to play small melodies before handing control of the keyboard over to his daughter so that she might do the same. Her warm ups aren't as graceful as her father's._

_His clawed fingers flit about more gracefully on the keys than you had expected them to._

  * This snippet is from an older draft, but at some point the reader's curiosity overtakes them and they take a peek into Sepulchure's room. Despite the Lynaria shrine and the pile of human skulls in the corner, they're most upset by the state of the shitty pallet on the floor that he sleeps on, knowing that Gravelynn has a huge plush bed in the room right next door.
  * _Perhaps, to a person who wasn't legally dead, or hiding out in the woods, or living with a monster and his daughter, the contents of his room might be considered objectively horrible. Perhaps they might have been enough to drive someone to leave the cabin in fright at their implications. And to your credit, you did find the contents to be unsettling, but it wasn't the horrifically large pile of skulls in the corner that had you so shaken, or the shrine with many candles to a portrait that you couldn't see. It wasn't the dust or the piles of books, or the corkboard on the wall with large amounts of twine linking the pins together._

_It was the bed._

_Hardly even a quilt tucked hastily in the corner for him to sleep on. A well-worn pillow was placed on top for added comfort, and somehow the entire thing seemed all the sorrier because of it. The stark contrast by itself was more than you could possibly bear—all that he had for himself was a sad pallet on a wooden floor while on the other side of that very same wall Gravelynn had a bed fit for a king._

_For the love of the Avatars, you were basically a glorified house servant, and even the couch you slept on had to be more comfortable than this._

  * Presumably in the same chapter that the reader realizes they don't know what Sepulchure's name is, he finally agrees to let them call him Amadeus. The reader asks if that's his actual name and he admits that it isn't, but out of all his names it's the safest thing to call him while they're so close to the crown. Whether he's talking about his identity as Sepulchure or his identity as Valen is unclear.
  * _Amadeus, a voice behind you says._

_You turn sharply. The Rose-monster is standing not too far behind you, leaning against the cabin's open doorway. He seems... deceptively relaxed. The posture is casual but everything about the way he's holding himself looks forced to you._

_It takes you a second to register what he's just said._

_Oh, you say dumbly, is that your name?_

_A thought strikes you and you scooch over to one side of the front step, making room for the Rose-monster to sit down beside you if he wishes and patting at the spot where you were almost subconsciously. His reaction is interesting to watch; a slight part of the lips and widening of the eyes. You almost think he's going to keep standing there but after a few seconds he does take a step out the door and join you on the concrete._

_No, he says; no, but it's the safest thing to call me so close to the Crown._

_Oh, you say. It takes you a while to let that mull over before you ask him, why do you need to hide from the crown?_

_It's a long story, he says, and it's not exactly a pleasant one either._

_There is a curiosity burning within you that grows hotter and hotter with each passing answer. Is it, you say, scarcely daring to finish your question, is it related to—?_

_Yeah, he says eventually. Yeah, he says, it is._

_Oh, you say, and you don't really know what to say next._

  * At some point, the Calamity Saga happens. Sepulchure comes home half-dazed and in unimaginable amounts of pain for reasons the reader doesn't know, but which involve a dragon apparently because guess who's rambling in his sleep.
  * _You realize that Gravelynn's father has somehow become someone important to you the day that he comes home staggering and delirious from what should have been a simple three-day venture. He's far earlier coming home than he should be. Gravelynn is away on one of her adventures, thank the Avatars, because you know him well enough now to know that he wouldn't want her to see him like this._

_His illusions were dropped the moment that the front door closed behind him, and his legs nearly drop below him at about the same time. He doesn't answer your cries of alarm. He doesn't seem to notice you at all, though he does shift his weight to lean more against you when you try to stabilize him. You can vaguely hear him say something about a dragon, but all you can think about is how utterly afraid you are that he's actually gotten hurt._

_You ask him what happened. He doesn't answer you. You ask him again, and this time he tells you that there had been business he'd needed to attend to in Falconreach. You already knew that. He tells you he's fine. You tell him he's full of shit and herd him over to the couch so that he can rest comfortably for once in his damn life while you get the medicine and healing potions. He does not protest._

_As you frantically search the cabinets for the first-aid kit, you wonder when he became so important to you. You wonder when you became unable to imagine life without him._

_By the time you find what you need and head back to him, he's slipped into a light sleep. You almost want to scream. Almost, because sleep is probably the best thing that he can do for now._

_You pull up a chair from the kitchen and resign yourself to watch him. His chest does not rise or fall like a living man's, so you have no clear means of telling if he truly is asleep or not. The thought pains you more than you expect it to. You wonder what you're going to do when he wakes up. You do your best not to wonder what you will do if he doesn't._

  * He does, obviously, pull through, but it's very touch and go. This provides most of the drama for chapter three.
  * Originally, it was planned that the Hero would show up at some point, and both they and the reader would be thoroughly confused. The Hero is confused because why is there someone other than Sepulchure just casually living in Sepulchure's house? The reader...
  * _You meet the Hero one day while sweeping the front step of the cabin. They're as surprised to see you as you are to see them. You'd heard tales of the Hero before they disappeared five years ago, so seeing them now feels surreal. They ask if you're a guard. You say no. You ask if they're the one that destroyed the guards. They say no as well, but in that quick sheepish way that people do when they're telling an obvious lie. You don't really care either way, since the guards were easy to put back together again._

_You tell them Gravelynn is expecting them, and allow them inside._

_Gravelynn rushes out to meet her guest with a rare enthusiasm. They're confident and cocksure, and the stories they tell Gravelynn are indeed very heroic. They're witty and funny and kind and everything that your younger self would've fallen in love with in an instant._

_As you busy yourself making snacks for Gravelynn and her famous friend to eat, you wonder why they don't appeal to you now._

  * Either the end of chapter 3 or the beginning of chapter 4 would have had the reader realize they're in love with Sepulchure. This is because of the natural love potion that canonically fills the air every February 14th.
  * _It's Hero's Heart Day when you confess an attraction to him, if only because it's Hero's Heart Day when you realize an attraction to him. There's a natural love potion in the air. You know this. You've known it all your life. So when you expect to feel somewhat differently about him when you wake up that day and you don't, you don't need to wonder why. All you can wonder is when, for how long—and will he feel the same way?_

_He doesn't say anything when you confess, though by the way that he tightens his jaw you know that he heard you. He excuses himself for the night and heads to his empty room. If you put your ear to the wall, you wonder if you could hear him asking the enshrined portrait for guidance._

_He hasn't said no. But he hasn't said yes either. You wonder why the uncertainty makes your heart feel sick._

  * I think the beginning of chapter 4 would have had Sepulchure admitting that he also has feelings for the reader, but I was unsure how to fit this in while also having room for smut. Nevertheless, here is the raw confession scene.
  * _He invites you into his room one day, shortly after your failed confession. You had hardly seen him at all since then--he left early and arrived late, something that you had to reassure Gravelynn had absolutely nothing to do with her. You step inside cautiously, still unsettled by the more than spartan conditions he kept for himself but not having any way to bring it up to him without revealing your prior intrusion._

_He introduces you to the enshrined portrait—a pencil sketch of a tastefully nude woman—and tells you about her. When they met. Who she was. What their love had been like. How she died. He paints you a picture so vivid that you wish you too, had lived and loved with this woman. You find yourself more saddened than you expected to be by the fact that you hadn't._

_He tells you that he'd never wanted to move on. That perhaps by keeping her memory alive, he could keep her spirit with him in a way that magic alone would never be able to accomplish. That she might be able to help him heal, even in death. His voice hitches as he speaks, and you wonder if you should let him continue uninterrupted or dare to comfort him._

_I was a fool, he says. She's not not with me. She never was. And even if by some harsh miracle she's been watching over me, she wouldn't bear to see me wallow in self pity like this. She would have wanted me to move on._

_He lifts the portrait off of its enshrine space, gazes at it lovingly. I have spent the past several days wondering, he says. Reflecting on my life—her life, and everything we shared. And.... I believe that it is time for me to let her go. It is time for me to move on._

_Will you help me?_

_You wonder how you could ever say anything but yes._

  * I'm realizing now that this story really should have had five chapters, not four.
  * Anyways. Smut.
  * There were going to be two sex scenes, one complete and one interrupted. The interrupted one comes first, crhonologically.
  * _You flip over top of him, straddling his hips. You ask him if he'd be willing to keep a secret for you. Amused, he says yes, and you tell him._

_You've been fantasizing about this moment for a long time._

  * While getting frisky, the reader finds out that, in addition to chronic pain, Sepulchure's transformation has also resulted in his dick being lost underneath the armor-meat. Because why not. Sepulchure, though, admits that he can still feel the reader's ministrations, and the two attempt mutual masturbation. They are interrupted by Gravelynn coming home, and leave to attend to her since neither party wants to attempt sex while there's a curious child in the house.
  * _You do not try again until weeks later._
  * The next sex scene is the complete one, and looking at what I have written for it kinda makes me glad I never got there. Sepulchure uses his hands to fuck the reader and I'm pretty sure his fingers have claws at the end, so big yikes.
  * _Though cold to the touch, the hands easing their way along your belly leave trails of fire burning under your skin, leaving you breathy and desperate for more—as well as more than a little confused. Still, you moan at his touch. You lean into him, lift up your shirt more to grant him more room to roam. He makes quick use of the extra space._

_Tell me, he says, speaking low into your ear and making your skin tingle with the chill of his breath, what would you want me to do to you given the option? Suddenly you understand. If he cannot make love to you in the normal way, then he will find some other means of pleasing you. You feel your heart flutter in your chest at the thought._

_I would want you to kiss me, you say, a touch unsure in your words but feeling emboldened by the though of what is to come. I want you to cover my entire body in kisses._

  * This scene is incomplete in my drafts and honestly I'm not even posting the actual penetration here and just changing the fic rating to mature because wow it's bad! i can't believe i thought that was good once! there's not even lube! bruh!
  * But the point of the scene was Sepulchure fucking the reader by having them close their eyes and focus on the sounds and feelings of what he was doing to them rather than what it looked like, since again, homie ain't got no dick and is honestly kinda self-conscious about that.
  * And they just kinda,,, cuddle at the end. Talk a bit.
  * Finding love doesn't solve all your problems. The reader is still a legally dead fugitive. Sepulchure is still a chronically pained meat man. But these things don't seem as bad when we have people who care about us.
  * They get everything cleaned up and start dinner so that Gravelynn has something nice when she gets home from her latest adventure.
  * And they feel, just for one night if nothing else, that things will be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> hey lemme know if you see various spelling/grammatical errors anywhere here, i'm pretty sure i caught all of them, but i'm probably wrong and y'all deserve a fic with no errors in it


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